Art
With Oakland facing a roughly $80 million hole in the city budget, a heralded new program to bring film productions to town is on the chopping block. The Film Rebate Incentive Program, an effort to lure film and television with rebates on production costs, was approved unanimously in July by the City Council. The $600,000 initiative was left out of a contingency budget that was adopted because the city has not yet received anticipated payments from the $125 million sale…
In the middle of a downtown Oakland studio, two artists stand on opposite sides of a canvas with brushes at the ready. They have no prompt, only 20 minutes to paint something. Music blares as the minutes tick down. Zoë Boston and Bud Snow are first up, and dozens of people begin to orbit the artists as their brushes hit the canvas. They went through the drill, as did a host of other artists, to raise money for a local…
When photographer Malcolm Ryder first moved to Oakland, the place he saw through his camera lens was different from what he saw on the news. “I became super sensitive to the incredible disparity between what was actually in Oakland and how it is usually portrayed in mass media. The mass media portrayal is not just borderline hostile, it is outright hostile. It doesn’t even make room for the possibility that the city could be or can be a better place,”…
Oakland First Fridays, a monthly festival on Telegraph Avenue featuring food and crafts, will shut down through March because of financial constraints, organizers say, and may be different when it reopens. “This year, we’ve been losing money every month and we need to stop the bleeding,” said Shari Godinez, the executive director of Koreatown Northgate Community Benefit District, the nonprofit that runs First Fridays. On Dec. 1, residents enjoyed “Frosty Friday,” the last First Friday event of the year. They…
More than 20 artists opened their studios in East Oakland’s Jingletown neighborhood last weekend during East Bay Open Studios, a bi-annual tradition where visitors can see both artists’ creations and their creative spaces. Inside the Gray Loft Gallery on Ford Street, nine artists showcased jewelry, paintings, and photographs. Jan Watten, the founder of the Gray Loft Gallery, has been participating in East Bay Open Studios for decades. “Open Studies provides an opportunity to put a bunch of work out, and…
Dangling from the sheer face of San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid 800 feet above rubbernecking pedestrians, three orange-clad figures swayed gracefully on Monday morning in a gravity-defying dance. This was not a stunt by daredevils. It was the latest public performance by Bandaloop, the expert Oakland dance troupe some might remember for their dance high on the face of Yosemite’s El Capitan in 2018. Bandaloop’s signature technique, which they call “vertical dancing,” combines features of rock climbing and dancing. Performers leap…
Bay Area artists performed Sunday evening for more than 500 people at the Continental Club in West Oakland to raise money to help children in Gaza. Organized by first-generation Palestinian American Janan Barance and artists AroMa and ASTU, the event raised over $13,000, all of which will be donated to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, which provides free medical care to injured and ill children in the Middle East. The event featured Palestinian and Arab artists, poets and performers who…
Every year, hundreds of costumed children and adults crowd onto handmade benches in an unassuming driveway in Oakland’s Glenview neighborhood to watch “Driveway Follies,” a free Halloween-themed marionette puppet show. This year’s show features psychedelic skeletons stepping out of their skins, a blue-skinned magician, and Mysterious Mose, a creature with the ability to duplicate itself on stage in the most extraordinary way. Closing night is Halloween. At the dress rehearsal, children disguised as unicorns, pirates and ninja turtles squirmed and…
Over the past few months, two photographers have been roaming Oakland’s streets, striving to capture the style of the city. Their work, a collection of 100 portraits, will debut to the public on Saturday at the “100 Faces of Oakland” photo exhibit at Uptown Station. The free exhibit, open from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., is part of the inaugural Oakland Style Week, a new series of more than 50 events that opened this week and runs through Sunday. It…